President-elect Donald Trump has made revisionism a cornerstone of his political career. Here’s why that’s so dangerous..
President-elect Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress or rewrite the history of his raucous first term in office — and especially what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — have gone unabated for years. As he prepares to take office again, a great memory-holing could soon begin.
Trump has made revisionism a cornerstone of his political career — a feature, not a bug. He regularly distorts facts and often denies any culpability of wrongdoing even if, for example, crimes he was alleged to have committed were proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court and he was convicted by a judge and jury.
Trump has vowed to sign a slew of executive orders once back in the White House. And from Day One, he will be buoyed by Republican majorities in Congress, albeit slim ones. The Republican Party has, over the last four years, become increasingly pliant to Trump’s every wish or whim, even if that means playing down certain facts about the mob bearing Trump flags and banners that broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Unchained from nearly a half dozen indictments and imbued with great though vague powers of immunity by a majority-conservative Supreme Court justices, several of whom he hand-selected, one of the only things to stop a great rewriting of the nation’s recent history will be the efforts of the public to hold fast to facts instead of fiction.
Here’s what Trump might try to distance himself from, once he’s back in office:
1: The Spark Of ‘Stand Back, Stand By’
As Trump promises to pardon Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol on his behalf, prosecutors, FBI agents and even Proud Boys who’ve testified in court have pointed to one comment from Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election that helped spark the violence to come.
At a debate against Joe Biden in 2020, he refused to disavow extremist groups like the Proud Boys, saying instead that they should “stand back and stand by.”
The Proud Boys had long considered themselves a “drinking club with a political problem,” according to defense lawyers, but Trump’s remark shifted the atmosphere.
It became an instant rallying cry and powerful recruitment tool for the Proud Boys, according to extensive witness testimony, texts and chats presented at the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial in 2023. Proud Boys leaders were inundated with messages from people who sought to join the group to support Trump and crush their perceived enemies. Prior to Trump’s comment, the group had for years mostly been disorganized but had been eager to grow their ranks or find a purpose.
That moment spawned significant outreach among Proud Boys chapters around the country. And it gave rise to multiple secret or encrypted text channels, where leaders of the extremist group would later coordinate their attack on the Capitol.
On the witness stand at the seditious conspiracy trial of onetime Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and Proud Boys leaders Joe Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Ethan Nordean, one FBI special agent testified under oath that communications among group members after the debate were jubilant because they believed Trump was telling them that he needed them.
After Trump lost to Biden, texts the FBI obtained from Proud Boys’ devices showed Tarrio discussing the election results, writing that it would be “dark times” if the results weren’t reversed — and “if it’s reversed, civil war.” Members responded by saying civil war was necessary “no matter what.” There was no toning down of that rhetoric from Tarrio nor any other leader associated with the group.
With their newfound confidence, throughout November and December 2020, Proud Boys attended rallies in D.C. for Trump aimed at stopping the “steal” and ended up clashing in the street with counterprotesters.
Former Proud Boys leader Jeremy Bertino, who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, was stabbed by a counterprotester after one of those rallies, and it became a seminal moment. He testified at Tarrio’s trial that the Proud Boys were upset because they believed police weren’t doing enough to protect them from anti-Trump demonstrators or individuals they deemed members of antifa. Bertino’s stabbing spurred the group’s animosity toward police, and that resentment grew until it was allowed to explode on Jan. 6.
When Trump announced on Dec. 19, 2020, that there would be a “wild” rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, they went into overdrive.
The Justice Department told jurors at the Proud Boys trial that leaders of the group knew they lacked discipline, generally speaking, but were open to using whatever means necessary to achieve their ends. On Jan. 6, Capitol Police reported seeing as many as 200 Proud Boys in the crowd. While that was a lot, it wasn’t enough to forcibly stop the transfer of power — and leaders of the group knew that going in, according to federal prosecutors.
They would have to rely on something that became known as the “tools theory,” prosecutors revealed: By agreeing to whip up the “normies,” or everyday people, who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, they would have the sheer force they needed to stop the certification in its tracks.
2. A Close Connection Between The Trump White House And An Extremist Group
Testimony provided to the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, as well as records, witness testimony and evidence from the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial in 2022 showed that there were few degrees of separation between Trump and associates or members of the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.
Kellye SoRelle, former general counsel to the far-right anti-government Oath Keepers network and former girlfriend of Oath Keepers leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes, is one such example.
SoRelle, who was sentenced to a year in prison on Friday, was a vocal proponent of stolen election claims. She told NBC in July 2022 that as a volunteer for Lawyers for Trump during the 2020 election, she had established contact with people inside the Trump administration, as well as with associates of allies like Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s onetime lawyer and an alleged architect of the “fake elector” scheme to overturn the election results. She also said she had contact with Trump attorney Sidney Powell, another alleged “fake elector” conspirator. (Giuliani has denied contact or association with members of the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys and any wrongdoing in the fake electors scheme. Powell pleaded guilty to conspiring to interfere in the 2020 election last October.)
condemned Trump’s conduct. As days turned to weeks, that attitude shifted among the GOP: The same lawmakers who had once come out against Trump for inspiring violence or had condemned his response to the attack opted to acquit him of inciting an insurrection when faced with an impeachment vote.
In May 2021, the House of Representatives passed legislation to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The body, which would be styled after the 9/11 Commission, would be tasked with reviewing what happened on Jan. 6 and probing security and intelligence failures. Members would be obligated to produce a final report at the end of their probe.
through the legislative branch of government. In June 2021, the House voted to approve the creation of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The only two Republicans who aligned with Democrats on that vote were then-Reps. Liz Cheney (Wis.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.).
The resolution to form the select committee featured slightly different terms: There would be 13 members instead of 10. Democrats extended an olive branch to Republicans and wrote into the committee rules that at least five members would need to be appointed in consultation with the House minority leader.
McCarthy presented several nominees and Pelosi accepted some. She would not compromise, however, when McCarthy presented Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana. Both men voted to overturn Biden’s victory after Jan. 6, and Democrats believed they were too close to Trump to investigate impartially.
This prompted McCarthy to take his ball and go home. Instead of finding just two more suitable candidates, he withdrew all five of his nominees and lashed out at Pelosi.
To save the committee from falling to the wayside, Pelosi picked the only two Republicans she felt were left for the job: Kinzinger and Cheney.
The Republican National Committee sued, claiming the select committee had been improperly formed because it didn’t have 13 members or a “ranking member.” The panel only ended up having nine members.
With Cheney as vice chair, it was a rose by any other name, according to the Trump-appointed judge, U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly. Kelly ruled against the RNC, finding there was nothing illegitimate about how the committee had been formed or its final makeup.
After all, Kelly noted, the House had previously formed committees with an imbalance of Republicans to Democrats, including a panel in 2005 that investigated the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. There were zero Democrats on that committee.
Trump has railed against the committee for years and has called for its members to be jailed. His attacks on Liz Cheney for her participation as vice chair have been constant. Trump and lawmakers like Rep. Barry Loudermilk have accused her of tampering with witnesses who testified before the committee.
trial, given the composition of a Supreme Court that has granted him vast immunity protections and his pattern of filing endless appeals, delays and motions to dismiss. In the end, however, and despite his attempts to rewrite the story of Jan. 6, Trump’s attempt to keep Smith’s charging report hidden from the annals of history failed.
Smith, who resigned after the case was dismissed in light of Trump’s election, explained in his final report to Attorney General Merrick Garland why Trump was ultimately not charged with insurrection. And he argued, despite Trump’s claims otherwise, his prosecution was never a matter of politics.
